


shaving cream

by awkwardeye



Series: Second POV [10]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Infidelity, Mild Sexual Content, POV Second Person, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 13:23:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8892370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardeye/pseuds/awkwardeye
Summary: Sometimes, when he can’t sleep, Hux begins to think that it wasn’t the engagement that made him unhappy, but the realization that there may be nothing more than the likes of such allotted to everyone. And he believes that Romeo and Juliet were never meant to be and that love only exists on paper and there truly is no meaning to the brushing of nervous feet beneath the table. Still, he's thrilled to spend his nights in the rundown cafe across town, thinking for a moment that this infatuation will bud and grow.ORSmall moments spent with someone he can't have send thrills racing through his body. Something innocent feels criminal.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Since I'm also writing a really dark fic, I've got to write something normal to keep myself happy, and this has been in my drafts for so long I nearly forgot about it

_“Love… no such thing._

_Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that’s not love._

_That’s stupidity or selfishness or fear._

_Love doesn’t exist._

_Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists._

_But not love._

_Love has to be reinvented, that’s certain.”- Arthur Rimbaud_

* * *

 

It’s a Tuesday afternoon and he’s on his way home from another banal day which really wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t wonderful - or even good for that matter - either. His fiancée called him twice to ask his opinion on glasses and tablecloths, which he was indifferent to in the same way he’s indifferent to his approaching marriage. When he goes home, she’ll probably have called his home phone several times to talk about nothing in the hopes of charming him with her endearingly simple conversation. She can’t call his cell phone because she doesn’t know he has one.

What a shame, she’s truly a nice woman. She wears the kind of skirts women who are soft around the edges wear and those trim cardigans that remind of his college days and the girls he had classes with who knew what they wanted out of life. Her name is Cynthia and she looks as though she was raised as a flower. While she’s nice and anyone would be pleased to be with her, their relationship (or at least his side of it) feels like more of an act than a genuine exchange. He figures he can marry her and pretend as he has that he cares for her, but he knows he’ll never love her.

Hux grips the bar tightly, ready to get off the train with the familiar screech of it pulling into his stop. The doors hiss as they open and people pour out like water out of a cracked glass. He watches them go one by one, pair by pair, all lumped together on the platform, and he watches more people step onto the train. He knows he should follow the train of people leaving going where they belong and where they’re meant to, but he turns away just before the door closes behind the final passenger and takes a seat instead.

He gets off at the next stop thinking himself worse than he is. No, he’s terrible and he knows it for he’s as terrible as he thinks he is, if not worse. He’s a liar for a number of reasons ranging from an innocent desire to follow the status quo to the not so innocent desire to act out every fantasy that’s ever crossed his mind on the pretty girl who frequents the cafe downtown at the most peculiar hours.

The only times he ever meets you is when he’s in a particularly queer mood, or having a particularly odd day, that results in his craving coffee at the strangest hour of the day. And there’s the shop downtown that never seems to close, that tiny cafe off the bookstore that never empty, but never full either, and that’s where he met you. Where he continues to  _ meet _ you.

You’re an object to be fancied to him. He’s obsessed with your words and how they all seem to mean both what you say and something entirely different communicated through your coy smiles and the way you raise your coffee to your painted lips. And you’re utterly infuriating. You’re infuriating because he wants you, but knows he shouldn’t have you. So it’s not you that truly frustrates him, but his own yearning to have you and to know you. That is, in the biblical sense of course.

The thing about Armitage Hux is that he knows himself to be terrible, but laments the good parts of himself. For example, he hates that he controls himself beside you, but he’s too pressured by society’s expectations of a man of his stature to give in. And he hates himself for that. He hates the very real portion of his heart that sets off ticking in your presence and the fluttering of wings in his stomach when you smile at him. And he hates that most nights he doesn’t know if he wants to make love to you or if he wants to stare into your gleaming eyes for just a moment too long.

You’re leaving as he’s coming in and the sudden shift in the routine - that really isn’t routine at all because it requires too many happenings and a dose of inconsistency - strikes a chord in him. He wonders what you would do if your positions were switched. If he was the one going and you the one coming, would you hesitate, too, on the stoop and stare fixedly at his face as though perplexed while mulling over the possibilities?

Shame, he thinks, it’s beginning to rain. And the thought seems so utterly out of place in the scheme of things that he walks past you without so much as a nod of his head, though it’s clear he recognized you.

So you walk on to wherever it is you’re going. But you don’t go without first catching his scent. You think with a wry smile that he smells a bit like someone you loved long ago. The familiar aroma of his shaving cream crisp and giving off the air of cleanliness. Your head begins to turn to follow the scent, but you catch yourself and you’re on your way once again.

The door closes behind Hux and disatisfaction fills him to the brim. With a short sigh, he turns on his heel, pulls a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and asks the boy sweeping for a light.

“I’m seventeen, sir,” the boy says, his pockmarked face doleful as his tone.

“I’ve been smoking since I turned nine,” Hux replies, sneering at the boy.

“S-sir…”

“Don’t ‘s-sir’ me,” the older man snaps. “Give me a goddamn light.”

“Yes, sir.” The boy produces a small box of matches from one of the pockets of his apron and lights one.

“What?” Hux’s cigarette bobs between his lips as he watches the hesitant teen.

“There’s no smoking in the shop.” The boy lowers his hand and the match shamefully.

“Well, I’m lighting my cigarette in the shop.” His pale eyes narrow in mild distaste. “Light my goddamn cigarette.”

“It’s the rules, sir…”

Hux grabs the box of matches from the boy and shoves him away in one movement. After lighting his cigarette, he tosses the box at the boy and straightens his suit, donning his usual grimace.

“You poor people and your rules,” he mutters, the door swinging open violently.

His foul attitude usually deters people. Which is exactly why he’s as authentic as faux leather in the presence of Cynthia. But you, you seem unfazed by his crass way of speaking and the way he seems determined to step on everyone on his ascent to the top. Wherever that is. In all honesty, you don’t like the man, but you’re fond of the scent of his shaving cream. And the way you feel as though you’re doing something forbidden whenever his knees graze yours beneath the table. 

He’s rude, rich, and convinced the world owes him something. You’d hate him if only you weren’t inexplicably and irrevocably infatuated with him. He reminds you of the boys your parents told you to avoid in the best way possible. For some reason, you crave his presence and you know you crave it because you’re always solemn in his absence. Yet, you walked past him without a word just moments before. 

But he did the same to you.

  
  


The next time you meet he’s with his fiancée and you don’t know how to process the ring on her finger or the way he allows her to touch him. You count the times her lips brush against his cheeks, each time she smiles, each time her fingers intertwine with his and he lets it happen.

And you try to imagine having done the same in the cafe while you spoke over a cup of coffee and a bagel. How would he have reacted to your fingers reaching shamelessly across the table to intertwine with his pale digits? How would he have reacted to your lips against his cheek? His lips even?

You smile and pretend to have never met him, walking quickly out of the restaurant to catch the breath you didn’t realize you’d lost. The world caves in around you when you turn and see him watching her intently as though whatever it is that she’s doing or saying means the world to him. With a broken sigh, you remind yourself that this isn’t love. This is only a passing infatuation as transient as a cloud.

Hux, on the other hand, feels your presence shoot through his body like an arrow of sorts.

Your gaze when it lingered on him left trails of sunshine across his aching heart and he’s been searching for you ever since. His eyes find you on your way out and a contented sigh escapes his lips as though to exclaim  _ there you are, there you are _ ! All as though he expects something terrible to occur to you in the moments between his fleeting glances.

The dinner drags on and he gets to thinking about love, and about nothing at all at the same time.

He’s much older than you. Not so much that it shows on your faces, but enough so that it shows in his mannerisms and how they differ from yours. It’s all in the way he seems to plan out any given situation while you recklessly dive in. Which is exactly why you want to kiss him despite his status and exactly why he barely ever touches you save for the brushing of your feet beneath the table.

You ask him about her the next time you meet. This time, in the cafe. It’s late again and you think he should be home with her, but for some unfathomable reason he’s not. Guilt courses through you though it’s not your relationship to ruin.

The song playing is one he knows and enjoys. He holds his finger to his lip and neglects to answer you, changes the subject like it’s nothing, and all is forgotten for the next few minutes while you speak. Your heads are dipped toward each other, bodies leaning like the drooping stems of plants an evening without water. He smiles at you, a genuine smile, for the first time. You nibble nervously on your nail, chip away at your nail polish, and look away feeling as though you’re once again on the same page.

“Do you love her?” you ask.

“I’m not a love song,” he murmurs, smirking at you.

“Do you have a crush on me?” You say it like it’s a naughty thing.

“I wish,” he whispers. “That would make things so much simpler. I know you too well to fill my head with fancies.”

You smile at him.

He murmurs your name as the song winds to an end and he reaches for your hands. Your body warms with your name on his tongue, swathed in his accented cadence.

“Armitage,” you reply, accepting his hands. You’ve never touched with bare skin against skin and the new sensation feels wildly amplified. You think you shouldn’t be doing this, but you don’t pull away.

“If things were different...” His eyes flutter shut and he shakes his head.

The hardest part about wanting someone so deeply that it hurts while being bound to separate fates is that one must acknowledge that truth at some point. And once it’s acknowledged, paths are split permanently and there’s no way to return to the lovely land of mindless hope afterward. Hux knows this as he recalls the past few months from the moment he first told you his name to the moment he realized he wanted you to this breaking point.

“We’re leaving town after.”

“You’re leaving…”  _ Me _ .

He nods.

You bring his hand to your lips and press a fleeting kiss to his palm. There's nothing sexual about it, but the simple gesture seems to suggest some forbidden erotic thing that makes him feel as though he's taking you right then and there. Al when in reality there's nothing quite as innocent as your soft lips against his calloused skin.

He’s not expecting it when you stand suddenly and gather your things without another word because you both know where this is going. Still, he’s silent and steeling himself. He thinks you have so much more of your life ahead of you that it would be a shame anyway to ask you to stay.

Your lips never catch his on your first and final kiss. They meet the very edge of his mouth and you feel stubble graze your skin as you pull away, the scent of his shaving cream heavy on your senses.

  
  


Sometimes, when he can’t sleep, Hux begins to think that it wasn’t the engagement that made him unhappy, but the realization that there may be nothing more than the likes of such allotted to everyone. And he believes that Romeo and Juliet were never meant to be and that love only exists on paper and there truly is no meaning to the brushing of nervous feet beneath the table. And he believes that, though he’ll always be fond of you, you’re but a passing thing long gone and nothing to mourn.


End file.
